How did the draft-dodging, Hillary-donating, China-trade-warring, quadruple-bankrupting, never-office-holding Donald J. Trump come to so dominate the Republican field? It's the most intriguing question of this moment in American political history.
For a while, I was baffled. I've identified as a conservative for as long as I've been politically aware. I support free markets, fiscal restraint, a capable and prudent military and an assertive foreign policy. Along comes Trump—the chronic flip-flopper who sloppily quotes "Two Corinthians," refuses to reform Social Security and Medicare despite looming deficits, waffles on abortion and praises Russian strongman Vladimir Putin—and I thought we'd be in for a side-show from a make-believe Republican, not the never-ending saga of The Donald.
Cue the great actor himself. He's a familiar figure on the American stage, known for his laws-of-physics-defying hair, his reality television persona, his yuuuuuuuge ego. He saunters onstage in 2015, following an embarrassing birther obsession in 2011 that cratered his first dalliance with the Republican nomination. And suddenly, he steals the show. His poll numbers spiked when he declared his candidacy in June and have climbed ever since.
The truth is that the Trump campaign isn't a candidacy at all. It's an act. It's the greatest show on Earth. It's nine parts fiction to every one part fact. But there's just enough truth to make it all seem real.
Trump is no conservative—but he feels conservative. His supporters laud him for "telling the truth" when in fact it isn't truth he's peddling—it's feeling. Trump panders, like George Wallace before him, to "the politics of rage." It's sentiment, not substance. And the sentiment is a nostalgic one: Make America Great Again. Note that greatness, not goodness, is Trump’s object. His supporters look at America, and at their own lives, only to face a mournful question: "what to make of a diminished thing."
As public opinion research has established, Trump's supporters tend to be lower-income, more secular, less educated and more likely to suffer from substance abuse and to commit suicide than typical Republican voters. Furthermore, they demonstrate a striking inclination toward authoritarianism. They listen with rapt attention as The Donald belts their anthem, the aria of the dispossessed: "Woe are we, the silent majority. / Mexicans, Muslims, and the GOP / Establishment have all ignored our plight. / Tremendous is the Donald's might; / He'll set our course aright."
As South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley noted in her response to this year's State of the Union address, Trump's is "siren call of the angriest voices," and we'd all be better off if, like Odysseus' sailors, we stoppered our ears rather than listen to it.
The more I listen to Trump, however, the more convinced I become of a singular truth. Fellow Republicans, Donald Trump is a monster of our own making. Trumpenstein is a Republican creation, and he's very much alive.
The Trump phenomenon stems from a Republican failing. For decades, Republican politicians have depended on working-class families for votes and pandered to their fears, while doing little to address their concerns.
Globalization, technological disruption and unskilled immigration have not been kind to American workers. Thanks in great part to the flight of manufacturing jobs, the middle class no longer makes up a majority of Americans. Yes, in recent years free-market energy policies and the shale gas revolution have helped to usher in a manufacturing renaissance, but it's too late to resuscitate the Rust Belt.
Meanwhile, despite President George W. Bush's support for comprehensive immigration reform and his insistence in a post-9/11 speech that "Islam is Peace", anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments have festered, especially among Republican-leaning voters. Trump's rhetoric has preyed on such fears, but it’s merely one more variation on the same nativist theme conservative pundits like Ann Coulter have played for years.
Trump's brashness and bravado, as well as his appeal to America's suffering working class, have garnered national attention for months. He may well capture the Republican nomination and the White House. But the odds are that he will not. Trump is exactly the sort of demagogue our constitutional system was designed to thwart. Even though his star may fade in the months to come, the voters Trump has mobilized will not. Their concerns will only grow in time.
Republican politicians have not only failed to deliver convincing solutions for working class Americans but have also failed to dispel the myths that Trump and his "Trumpeters" repeat. It is a failure of courage and compassion. Moving forward, the Republican Party’s must take the enlightened path: address the concerns of the working class head-on.
The GOP must be the party of reform. We must reform Social Security and Medicare to preserve their future. We must support education reform to give all Americans an equal shot in the global economy and a common sense of the responsibilities of citizenship. We must reform the tax code so that the average American worker can fill out her own tax return—and pay a lower rate than her boss. We must reform the criminal justice system, end the War on Drugs and embrace a more humane approach to fight the scourge of substance abuse. We must reform our broken immigration system and curtail illegal immigration, while also welcoming anyone who gets a college education in the United States to stay, work and even start a business here. And, above all, we've got to stop blaming Muslims and immigrants for America's problems. We must acknowledge and correct our failure to address the concerns of the working class.
Trump may be a monster of the GOP's making, but what is done may yet be undone. If we pursue pro-growth policies to reverse the suffering of the working class, we may soon deprive the populist fire of the oxygen it needs. That's how we stop the next Donald Trump—by knocking the air from his lungs.
Matthew King is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Mondays.
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